Harry Potter's magic lies, in part, in its message

During one brief — extremely brief — lull in the wall-to-wall wizardry that drives the climactic “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” a very old friend of Harry’s shows up with one last bit of advice. “Words,” he says, “are our most inexhaustible source of magic.”

In all of Hollywood’s adaptations of the Potter books, never has one quite so clearly caught author J.K. Rowling’s deepest belief. Words wound. Words heal. Words matter. And it is her own words — spread over seven books and thousands of pages — that have encouraged millions to turn to her tales for pleasure, and perhaps to find — quite accidentally — a moral lesson.

Words are not what most young fans of the movie series will take away with them, as the franchise draws to a close with its eighth film, released Friday. Movies are about movement, and images, and they’re more likely to send people home on a purely emotional surge rather than wrestling with ideas.

But Harry Potter’s saga has always had a message to it, too. It was never too obvious, although Rowling has always been forthright about her own beliefs. She has said she was raised Protestant, and felt her religion deeply (although she struggled with it during her university days). She says she still goes to church regularly, describing herself as a sort of constantly questioning, Grahame Greene kind of Christian.

Doubt, in fact, is a large part of her faith. But ultimately, as she has said, “I believe in God, not magic.”

As a child, Rowling particularly adored the “The Chronicles of Narnia” by C.S. Lewis, who mixed pagan imagery with New Testament themes; as an adult, Rowling was disappointed to discover their allegory was not as subliminal as she’d once thought. So when she began to write the Potter series, she decided to make her moral message implicit (even as, she said, she feared anyone who truly knew her faith would soon guess where the series was heading).

Her message was so subtle, not surprisingly, that many rigidly religious people couldn’t see it at all, loudly decrying the books as Satanic. What they didn’t realize was that Rowling wasn’t promoting carefree magic but the hard, day-to-day work of moral improvement. What they couldn’t appreciate — because of their obsession with simple props such as wands and broomsticks — was Rowling’s use of situations and archetypes that have been part of Western culture for thousands of years.

Look past the spells and elves and dragons, and you’ll see that the arc that Harry travels in the books is very much a Christian one. At the start of the series Harry is a child who thinks as a child, acts as a child. But then his uniqueness is revealed to him. It becomes clear that he has been chosen, since birth, for an essential task. He is the only one who can stand up for a flawed humanity and trample the living, snake-headed symbol of evil underfoot.

Yet although Harry has been chosen for this role, he still has to grow, and question — and, ultimately, make his own choice. And although there’s the chance he may lose his life if he agrees, it is a burden he will accept, not only for those he loves but for millions he does not even know. Greater love hath no man than this sort of selfless courage — and indeed, when he realizes he has it, Harry is no longer a child.

These are strong themes for a series aimed, supposedly, at children, and it was easy to lose track of them as the books went on, or controversies flared (as when, for example, Rowling “outed” one of her own characters as gay). And the movies added another invisibility cloak, as — inevitably — the special effects and celebrity cameos and wonderful performers garnered most of the fans’ attention.

But that was right, too. Rowling’s primary purpose was always to entertain, not lecture, and the movies always emphasized the fun, particularly during the first four films. There were little details such as the living portraits, or colorful characters like Nearly Headless Nick. There were Quidditch games and fantastic creatures. There was the joy of watching a charming young cast literally grow up on screen.

And of course it is that journey — that putting away of childish things, that sometimes painful voyage into responsibility and authority and moral judgment — that the series has always been about.

In fact, as it’s gone on, the series itself has matured. To look back at the first film now — with the unbearable Dursleys, the bullying Draco, the sardonic Snape, the gently paternal Dumbledore — is to see a movie full of broadly drawn, almost Victorian-era villains and heroes. But remember that we were seeing them through Harry’s eyes then, and those people were as a child would have seen them.

Watch the new film and you’ll see many of them from a more mature viewpoint. And you’ll realize they were often far more complicated than we, or Harry, first realized.

Because if growing up means anything at Hogwarts, it means acknowledging how little we know of people’s real problems, and potential. Ferocious werewolves may turn out to be heroes; motherly teachers may turn out to be fiends. Everyone is vulnerable to envy or despair; everyone is capable of remorse and rebirth.

Everyone, that is, except Voldemort — which is why it is only Voldemort who is finally, fully, beyond all redemption.

Of course, one doesn’t have to be Christian, or even religious, to appreciate the moral lessons of “Harry Potter.” Much as she loved those “Narnia” books, Rowling learned an important lesson from them, and hid her own treasures well. The symbolism is there, if you’re willing to look for it. But if you don’t share her faith, or simply choose not to see those parallels, that’s no worry either. The stories still enchant.

There’s still the powerful secular message of friendship, loyalty, duty and honor. There’s still the fantastic English-schoolboy world — part Dickens, part Dahl — of terrifying teachers and luscious sweetshops and sneering snobs. And, of course, there are still the thrilling delights of adventure and fantasy and mystery and romance.

And although the series has finally come to an end, that spell goes on — in a nearly endless incantation of glorious, magical words.